Architects Mike and Nea Poole expected challenges when they set out to transform a Rockville barn into their home, just not the kind they actually encountered. Such as when their electrician called to say Hanover County wouldn’t issue an electrical permit. “He said, ‘You’re going to have to go down there. They want to speak with the homeowner,’” Nea recalls.
At the building inspector’s office, officials peppered her with questions: Why do you need that much power? Why do you want to make this barn into a house? “I swear, it’s like they thought I was going to be growing pot inside,” Nea says. But the tense mood melted when she mentioned the building’s location. “You mean the Cochrane barn?” someone asked.
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Mike and Nea Poole's Rockville home
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A new sliding “hayloft” door overlooks the living/dining area which combines modern and rustic design elements.
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A custom-made concrete basin adds to the rustic ambiance in the powder room.
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The barn’s original cedar siding was repurposed for the bar base in the kitchen.
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Nea and Mike Poole, principals of Poole &Poole Architecture
Harwood Cochrane, a high-school dropout whose father died when he was 16, had started an overnight delivery company during the Great Depression with just one truck. In 1986, he sold it to what would become the freight division of UPS for $1.2 billion. His wife, Louise, an artist with a talent for landscaping, designed the barn as a focal point for their farm, Walnut Hill, where they raised three children and lived for 51 years.
“I had never in my life thought we’d buy and renovate a barn, but once we saw it, it was a project we couldn’t say no to.” —Nea Poole
Though not technically historic, the circa-1974 barn had served as a community space of sorts since 2004, when the Cochranes downsized and transferred it to the Virginia Museum Real Estate Foundation. Revenue from the sale of everything once stored there went to the nearby fire department. Two of the county officials Nea met with on the day of the permitting debacle had attended weddings there. One told her, “You have a responsibility to Hanover County to do this well — it’s a part of our history.”
The Pooles were attracted to the barn’s structural integrity, with features like 2-foot steel beams and real lumber flooring; its “pristine” condition — in 40 years, it had only ever housed hay; and to the lower-level garage, which offered four times the space of the garage in their previous home in Wyndham.
“I had never in my life thought we’d buy and renovate a barn, but once we saw it, it was a project we couldn’t say no to,” Nea says.
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A view of the living room from the loft above. The Pooles kept the original structural beams in place, providing architectural interest.
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The floating metal staircase was custom made by Ore and Fiber, with wooden stair treads by Surface Architectural Supply.
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The wood-burning fireplace is clad with Boral cultured stone.
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An original rendering of the barn by Louise Cochrane, the property's previous owner.
To maintain the barn’s Americana Dutch architecture — a style characterized by symmetry and a roof with two sloping sides — the Pooles changed as little of its footprint as possible. On the main level, they cut a hole through the floor joists to make way for stairs to the basement, then used the removed joists as steps. “We wanted to highlight and embrace what it had been,” Nea says.
Existing openings, like the evenly spaced vents along each length of the barn, became the literal framework for windows that flank the entrance. They pulled the front door back by four feet, beyond a pair of open barn doors, to create a receiving area for guests. Renovations, and the process of turning the barn into a 7,000-square-foot home for their family, including two teenagers and a long-haired Weimaraner, took three years.
They called on interior designer Susan Boatright of Focus Design Interiors, with whom they had worked through their firm, Poole & Poole Architecture, for finishing touches. “They moved from a very traditional home and wanted something more contemporary,” Boatright says. “We chose a color palette that complemented the architecture instead of competing with it: warm grays, whites, and a little bit of blue and peat moss green.” Wood-burning fireplaces and natural materials such as walnut, granite and oak help marry the modern details with the barn aesthetic.
In the master bathroom, Boatright designed a wall of Brazilian granite to separate the walk-through shower from the vessel bathtub. A tall piece of opaque glass is positioned on a sliding track to offer privacy in the window-facing shower.
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A gesso painting of the god of wine flanked by two custom wine coolers in the dining room
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The master bedroom is serene in soft grays.
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An opaque glass sliding window was custom made for the master bath to provide privacy. A wall of Brazilian granite separates the shower from the vessel tub.
The couple reused every square inch of original material they could salvage. Sections of the barn’s exterior siding, for example, which were brittle and faded from exposure on one side, held smooth cedar undersides — an ideal finish for the powder room, kitchen island and dining room wine-storage unit. They also incorporated green technologies: solar panels on the back roof, automated blinds that serve as a shield from the sun’s heat in the summer and mineral insulation made from rocks.
“You have a responsibility to Hanover County to do this well — it’s a part of our history.” —Hanover County official
The barn sits on 30 acres, and as part of the transformation, Nea designed a pool to complement the home. “I didn’t want it to look like an afterthought,” she says. The back of the house is completely symmetrical except for the landscape — on one side is the driveway and garage entrance; the pool, on the other side, balances that out. From inside the home, sight lines offer two different views of the pool. The pool’s shape, a deep rectangle flanked by two shallow squares, mimics the rooms of a home. “You can have different clusters of people doing different things in the pool at the same time,” Nea says.
A framed sketch of the barn as Louise Cochrane first envisioned it hangs in the foyer, a gift from the Cochranes’ oldest daughter, Judy Gilman-Hines. Above it is a photograph of the barn today — a juxtaposition of the home’s conception and rebirth. “A farm down the road was growing corn the summer we came to look at property in the area, and that’s all we could see from the lower road,” Nea recalls, “but as we came around a turn we saw this huge, cool barn with a ‘for sale’ sign on it. We never even went to look at the other place.”
